


A Love Like This

by starkpad



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 06:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1972797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkpad/pseuds/starkpad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wants a love that hurts to look at and hurts to touch and hurts to hold in his chest. </p><p>But just looking at Tony sets Steve on fire.</p><p>And Steve doesn’t know anything about science so he can’t explain how it’s possible everyday Steve’s love self-replicates.  </p><p>Tony is everything in the world strung together with words and full stops and the carve of his handwriting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Love Like This

**Author's Note:**

> heavily inspired by http://inkskinned.tumblr.com/post/91804448579/i-just-want-the-love-that-i-learned-about-when-i and http://twentypaper.tumblr.com/post/89946824448/she-breathes-in-words-that-fill-her-lungs-with 
> 
> beautiful poetry from those two writers, credits to them.
> 
> follow me on my tumblr, starkpad.tumblr.com

Steve Rogers wants the love that he learned about when he whispered to roses and watched them blush while they shook their petals and spoke about the kind of people who would pluck them – because imagine the love in weak fingered star lovers who let themselves bleed on beach thorns just so they can hand over a slightly wilted bloom to the person they adore. 

 

“Imagine a love like that.” Steve says to Tony in the middle of the kitchen at 2 a.m.

 

“You’re very idealistic.” Tony shrugs from across the kitchen counter, his face illuminated by the glow of the arc reactor in the dimly light room.

 

“I’m being realistic.” Steve says.

 

“You sound so sure.” Tony says, pointing a finger at Steve.

 

“That’s because I am, I just know it.”

 

Tony looks at Steve fondly and for Steve, it suddenly seemed hard to breath as Tony says, “Imagine a love like the one you always draw.”

 

Steve’s drawing is seeing the way city streets love nature enough they force flowers through every crack they can. 

 

Steve’s drawing is like how the night sky loves the snow so much that up in the artic it always dances.

 

Steve’s drawing is like how bumblebees love flowers and their queens.

 

Steve’s drawing is like poetry on canvas. 

 

At least, that is how Tony says in between nightmares at 2 a.m. when Steve wants Tony to look at a piece of him – a peace of love and hopes that he can feel it taking control of his body and let the nightmares slip past quietly.

 

Steve had met a man and from that day on – the day they stopped throwing war and hatred at each other – was always drawing and painting the other man because Steve knew that he would one day be his everything and Steve sometimes wrote only a sentence at the very bottom of the drawing and Steve sometimes wrote a hundred.

 

Steve imagines the kind of force that guides a pencil through all that drawing.

 

Steve imagines the kind of love soaking into that paper.

 

Sometimes, Steve wrote quick ones at the bottom of the canvas that says, “It’s July 6th and I love you”

 

Sometimes, Steve wrote long ones that wax lyrical on the harsh arch of his eyebrows.

 

Steve imagines the torn sketchbook sheets with doodles and margins where Steve penned his sonnets during a debriefing.

 

Steve imagines finding a Starbuck receipt where the back just says, “Running on Coffee again today because I love talking to you more than I love sleep” in the other man’s messy handwriting.

 

Steve imagines himself taping pictures and ribbons and pieces of grass as little reminders; here is where we kissed for the first time, you used to wear this around your wrist, this grass was the greenest I’d ever seen and we had a picnic in a park that looked like it was out of a movie. 

 

Steve wants a love like that.

 

Steve wants a love that hurts to look at and hurts to touch and hurts to hold in his chest.

 

But just looking at Tony sets Steve on fire.

 

And Steve would rather watch how the light crosses Tony’s face than really pay attention to the sunset.

 

And Steve’s been to art museums but nothing struck him as beautiful as the way Tony looks first thing in the morning when Tony wakes up and roll over and give Steve that half smile of sleepy contentment.

 

And Steve doesn’t know anything about science so he can’t explain how it’s possible everyday his love self-replicates.

 

Steve’s been an artist for so long but good lord, Steve thinks he can imagine a love that feels like a summer storm because Steve’s drawn so many drawings so many times and they're all just Tony.

 

And Steve finally realized he’s been drawing and painting Tony since he met him and Steve knows.

 

Steve found a love like that.

 

Tony breathes in words that fill his lungs with magic and hope so his ribcage is close to breaking, but his heart is forever warm.

 

It’s like the gods put star into his eyes and the angels inked their soft whispers onto Tony’s skin like constellations traced out into a map.

 

Tony’s fingers are crafted from dust into a forest of secrets made from the sorrows and joys of those around him.

 

Hollowed flesh, torn down walls, and Tony is brimming with daises and dandelions and an endless ocean that spreads out like a blanket across hopes and dreams and everything lovely and dangerous.

 

Undone hair, opened palms and Tony is expensive perfume, bar soap and black coffee; a broken violin, merely a distant echo of melody playing into ambience of the afternoon.

 

Tony could be warm like sun that just about touches Steve’s cheeks with a flush.

 

Tony is gentle like the brush of wind against Steve’s hair.

 

Tony is strong like a storm during a cold winter night.

 

Tony is everything in the world strung together with words and full stops and the carve of his handwriting.

 

Tony is life.

 

Tony is art.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
